A look back at the biggest news in the IT industry over the past year

It's been a year of ups and downs for the tech industry, with augmented reality and virtual reality making its way to the forefront of technologies to watch and major acquisitions from top tech players to exploding smartphones and cybercriminals showing no signs of slowing down.

The year also saw driverless cars come into action, the growing popularity of artificial intelligence, Apple's run in with the FBI, Yahoo suffering from the biggest hack record and the launch of countless number of gadgets.

From a regional perspective, 2016 became the year for the start-up scene, Dubai's continued efforts to become the happiest city in the world though digital transformation and evolving into a smart city, as well as hosting the region's largest technology event, GITEX Technology Week.

ITP.net's delves into some of the biggest regional and global IT stories from the year, covering all the doom and gloom.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he would spend the year working on an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to help him manage his home and work. Zuckerberg completed his AI project in December, unveiling the first version of his own "Iron Man"-inspired Jarvis, which he spent 100 hours building.

2016 also kicked off with the Consumer Electronics Show in Los Angeles, unveilingLenovo ThinkCentre X1, Samsung Creative Lab projects, LG Roll-able 18-inch OLED Display and LG SmartThinQ, as well as other gadgets.

TP-Link entered the mobile market in 2016, not only paving its way into the mobile market but also allowing it to expand the scope of business. Other smartphone vendors launched new product lines, including Huawei, Apple and BlackBerry.

Furthermore, research stated that the Middle East was ideally positioned to take advantage of the era of digital transformation. With the eruption of the digital transformation era, cyber-security came out hand-in-hand with experts urging organisations and individuals to become better prepared for the year ahead.

February 2016:

February saw a number of appointments being made; VMware appointed of Jean-Phillipe Barleaza as vice president, Channel and Alliances and General Business in EMEA. Virgin Mobile hired Fouad Halawi as its new CEO to lead the company into its next phase of development in Saudi Arabia. Plus, Ericsson appointed three new heads of Customer Units in the Middle East and East Africa to further strengthen market position and accelerate transformation and growth.

Cloud continued to strengthen in the region, with Qualys and Ixtel partnering to deliver cloud IT security, Avaya took aim at the midmarket with hybrid cloud solutions and du and SAP partnered to support UAE governments and private enterprises with cloud-based applications.

Apple users faced a number of issues in their devices, such as "Error 53" and changing the date to 1970 bricked the iPhone. Plus Android phones faced problems also as users experienced malware hijacking some models.

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona unveiled a number of announcements, including BlackBerry launching its own cyber security practice, talks of driverless cars, Visa's efforts to secure payments with the Internet of Things (IoT) and of course, various mobile announcements.

March 2016:

Google's driverless car hit headlines when it collided with a public bus in California. The driverless car was reportedly travelling at a low speed of 2mph and the bus was travelling at 15mph and no injuries were reported.

Sadly, the founder of email, Ray Tomlinson, died in March. He was widely credited with inventing email and for selecting the @ symbol for email addresses.

The Middle East's largest online retail and marketplace platform, Souq.com, announced the completion of a funding round of more than AED 1bn (USD 275m), the largest financing of an e-commerce business in the region. CEO Ronaldo Mouchawar told ITP.net "We also want to leverage the trust the public has for our platform to become the true souk of the Arab World. We are born here and we want to see the region being innovative in technology. We want to be seen as the company that is always innovating around ecommerce and in online payments and logistics space while empowering our users in making better choices at better prices."

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Samsung's S7 and S7 Edge debuted in the UAE in March, however the handset market as a whole took a dive in the Middle East as IDC reported it grew only 1% in the Middle East during the final quarter of 2015.

April was the month for security. Some of the highlights included a report from ESET, who partnered with Axiom Telecom to drive awareness on the importance for mobile protection in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.With the GCC's two most populated countries boasting region-leading mobile penetration rates, the personal data and sensitive information processed on smartphones and tablets has made the Gulf nations attractive target for potential cyber attackers.

Google also unveiled that is discovered 16,500 infected websites per week and that over 12% of recently fixed websites fall victim again to a new attack within 30 days. The bad news did not stop there, as the Register reported that the Qatar National Bank had been ‘hacked'.

Smart Dubai Government exhibited an array of smart services and apps at the Dubai International Government Achievements Exhibition 2016, where it promoted how these services can ease UAE living. Other projects came to light in April too, whereEtisalat and Huawei tested smart parking in the region.

May 2016:

After Qatar National Bank admitted it had been breached, DarkMatter spoke of why organisations should know their digital environments top prevent such things. Security FireEye came out and said that it has detected a wave of cyber-attacks against banks in the Middle East.

Nokia made a comeback in May after Microsoft officially announced it is selling its feature phone business to FIH Mobile, a subsidiary of Foxconn and Finnish company HMD Global for $350m. However, Toshiba exited the B2C PC market asIDC and Gartner reported declining PC sales for the past eight consecutive quarters.

Dubai welcomed the world's first 3D printing office which was opened by the Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and Dubai's ruler His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

GITEX Technology Week, it will become home to more than 1,000 entrepreneurs, investors and mentors as it plans to launch the GITEX Start-up Movement. It highlighted innovative start-ups around the world will have the platform to sell, form partnerships and attract investors.

June 2016:

June was the month when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg fell victim to a cyber hack as he lost control of his LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter accounts.

On 1 June, Hotmail and Outlook woke up to high volumes of spam in their accounts. Microsoft had confirmed that its spam filters for its email services were experiencing issues.

Keeping in line with the UAE's digital transformation plan, Emirates NBD revealed its own $136m digital plan where the focus lied on launching a three-year program focused on digital innovation and multichannel transformation of processes, products and services.